Everybody seems to have been invited, and Mr. Wertzelmann told me he intended that it should be remembered as the ball of the season. Old Mrs. Johnson came and sat next to me on the _quai_ this morning, and broke the news that Count Albert has proposed to Rosalie and been accepted. She didn't seem to like it when I said I felt sorry for the girl, because she was too good for Count Albert, who was old enough to be her father, and I advised her to look him up and all his antecedents at Vienna before the marriage ceremony. But she was quite satisfied that he was a real, live Count, because the "Schweitzerhof knew all about him." I shouldn't be surprised, however, that she takes my advice, for she is a shrewd old woman, but just fancy anyone taking a husband on a hotel guarantee! A very pretty woman--a blonde, with a figure that the Venus de Milo might envy, and dressed, oh! là là! shades of Paquin and Worth!--passed us several times, walking up and down the _quai_. Everybody turned round to stare at her, and everybody asked who she was, and the Princesse di Spezzia, who was talking to Comte Belladonna, put up her lorgnettes. The Duchesse de Vaudricourt leaned over the arm of her chair and whispered to me:-- "Voilà la plus belle courtisane de Florence. C'est une des bijoux de M. le Prince di Spezzia. La fameuse Vittoria Lodi!" {_Monsieur le Prince_} Later on the Prince di Spezzia sauntered out of the National on the arm of the Marquis de Pivart, both dressed faultlessly as usual, _à l'Anglais_, and they actually stopped and spoke to the _demi-mondaine_. The Duchesse de Vaudricourt became quite excited over it, and gave me a regular _New-York-Herald-Paris-Edition_ of Monsieur le Prince. He is very English in appearance, but then Poole makes all his clothes, and he could easily pass for an Englishman, which I think would please him immensely. But why--why will these smart foreigners who affect English fashions always wear lavender or buff-coloured French kid gloves? Perhaps you will say, for the same reason that Englishwomen who are for ever talking of Paris fashions wear English corsets. So under all the artificiality of civilisation national traits come out in a pair of gloves or a pair of stays!